We started planning an issue on corporate power last summer.
At the time, many were coming to see that solutions to nearly every
concern—from climate change to mass foreclosures, from the health care crisis
to joblessness—are stymied by the outsized power of corporations. But what
could ordinary people do when faced with gigantic corporations and government
officials who all too often act at their behest?

Is it possible to take on the power of Wall Street and the
1%? If so, how do we do it? A majority of people in the United States agree
that corporations have too much power. But we live in a world where corporate
lobbyists dominate Congress and our president appoints his top economic
advisors straight from Wall Street.

The spring issue of YES! will look for the practical ways to
resist corporate power. We’ll look at successes in keeping corporations from
controlling our elections, our media, and our health care system, and at strategies
to reverse the legal fiction of “corporate personhood.” And we’ll explore how
we can have a “rule of law” that applies to big corporations and Wall Street
firms, just like it applies to the rest of us.

Here’s where you come
in. The Occupy movement has created a new renaissance in the evolution of
powerful nonviolent direct action. What are your favorite tactics?

Perhaps it’s the Cleveland group that occupied the yard of a
single mother who was about to be evicted. Or maybe it’s pitching a tent in the
lobby of a Bank of America branch, or singing through an eviction hearing,
creating enough disruption that the hearing and the foreclosure were postponed.

Email your stories to outreach[at]yesmagazine.org

Please send us your stories of the tactics you’ve used or
that you’ve witnessed. Upload your videos on YouTube and email us the link, along
with a brief description about what happened. Or email photos (just a few, please!) and a description—or just your story—to outreach[at]yesmagazine.org. And finally, share this article with others who speaking up, acting out, or simply supporting the work of the 99% from the sidelines.

We’d
like to post your ideas on our website, and some of them could become part of
next issue of YES!

Interested?

Introducing the movement that’s shifting our vision of what kind of
world is possible—from the new book,

The Story of Citizens United v FEC: How we the people can reclaim our democracy.

For more than a decade, a groundbreaking Clean Elections law has helped
protect Maine politics from the influence of big money. But what’s
happening now that big spenders have free rein to influence
elections—and what does it mean for the rest of the country?

Sarah van Gelder wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions for a just and sustainable world. Sarah is executive editor of YES!